Practical Exercises to Train Brain

Neurobics, as Dr Lawrence Katz and Manning Rubin called them in their book ‘’Keep Your Brain Alive’’, are specially designed exercises to help you keep your brain in shape and even boost its power. These kind of tricks can also slow your mental aging process, which, let’s be honest, none of us are looking forward to.

Every one of us, no matter how intelligent, needs to train their mind constantly. Even the best of us had their strategies to boost the productivity of their brains and make themselves geniuses as we know them today. For instance Leonardo da Vinci had a whole list of them. Some, according to the book ‘’Strategies of Genius’’ by Robert Dilts, are visual perception, learning by heart, imagining something before sleep or shortly after waking up, presenting something in different perspectives and so on.

Visualization was the first step which led most of the masterminds of our history to their greatest discoveries. Tesla, for example, was known for his ability to visualize a machine and imagine it working for a whole week. But even though you’re not Tesla, nor any kind of inventor, you can still use a similar method of visualization. Just imagine a word in your head and spell it backwards. This engages the visual area of your brain and helps with learning, as well as memory .

There are numerous examples of meaningful people which combined music and science. Albert Einstein played the violin, Camille Saint-Saëns enjoyed mathematics. Nowadays there are a several studies which show that actively learning to play an instrument can help person’s academic achievement. If you don’t have time for that, but still like music, listening to an unknown song and memorizing the lyrics can also help. It boosts the level of acetylcholine, the chemical that helps build your brain, and improve your memory skills.

Learning a foreign language can increase the size of your brain – Swedish scientists said. This was discovered when they used brain scans to monitor what happens when someone learns a second language. The study has shown that this kind of learning causes visual effect on the brain and it has even suggested that the areas that grow are linked to how easy the learners find the language. So one can even say the harder the language the bigger the brain.

Last but definitely not least – concentration! Everyone lacked focus at some point and we all need it on daily basis, either to study or listen to a dear friend talk about something we couldn’t care less about. There are a lot of ways to summon your attention and most of them are based on changing your habits, like your usual route to work or even reorganizing your desk. One more, and pretty interesting trick is wearing your watch upside down on your wrist. These things force your brain to wake up from habits because it must use its right side, which processes unrecognizable objects, instead of the left which processes logical and sequential order. This also works when you’re trying to find something in the room. Just start looking from the opposite side of the room than you usually do.

So keep your brain sharp and good luck!

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